


A Mile In His Shoes

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [61]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "any, any, Freaky Friday AU(a parent swaps body with their child and sorta de-ages that way)."</p><p>Frank Mitchell dreams he is whole again.</p><p>Post-Reunion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mile In His Shoes

Frank awoke disoriented and alone.  
  
Dammit. Alone. Wendy was still mad at him, then.  
  
But then he realized he was not in his bed but in a tent, and sunlight was pouring through the canvas. In a tent? What the hell? He cast about himself and saw a tac vest. A P-90. Military gear. Was this a dream? Because -  
  
Frank sat up and looked down at himself and _he had legs_.  
  
This had to be a dream. Some kind of memory? Because when he’d been doing field exercises and sleeping in tents he was younger, and P-90’s weren’t the military issue assault rifle of choice back then.  
  
But when he grabbed the olive uniform and dragged it close, the name above the breast pocket was Mitchell.  
  
Frank prodded himself in the knee and felt it, and tears came to his eyes.  
  
He’d had so many dreams about being young again, about walking again, but never this vivid. So he was going to enjoy it while it lasted. He still knew how to dress for duty, so he got back into his uniform, got his tac vest and boots on and grabbed his rifle, and then he poked his head out of his tent.  
  
His tent opened onto a small camp, a fire and four other tents.  
  
He didn't recognize the blonde woman who was breaking down one of the other tents. She smiled at him.   
  
“Glad you could join us. Ready to head back?”  
  
Frank hadn’t served with any women in combat or even trained with them, but this woman had silver oak leaves on her uniform.  
  
“Let him eat first.” The man sitting by the fire had military-short hair and glasses but no rank on his uniform. He cast Frank a look. “Breakfast is MREs. Chicken or mac’n’cheese? It all tastes like chicken.”  
  
Before Frank could answer, another woman said, “Ooh, save the mac’n’cheese for me!”  
  
It took Frank a second, but he recognized her. Black hair in non-regulation pigtails, British accent. It was Vala, who worked with Cameron. She said she worked in payroll, but she was also wearing a uniform and a tac vest.  
  
This was officially the strangest dream ever. But Frank had legs, so he stood up (he _stood up_ ) and went to join the others at the fire, accepted the MRE the other man gave him. Jackson, his name was, according to his uniform.   
  
Vala was Mal Doran on her uniform. Frank hadn’t realized it was two words when Cameron introduced her.  
  
Frank was completely unprepared for the mountain of a black man who emerged from the fifth tent, also wearing tac gear. Frank couldn't help it. He gaped at the raised gold tattoo on the man’s forehead.  
  
But Jackson said, “Hey Teal’c, come and get it before Vala eats all of it.”   
  
Vala looked offended. “Don't listen to him, Muscles. I'm watching my girlish figure.”  
  
Teal’c. What an unusual name.  
  
“I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said, his voice deep and rumbling, his inflection terribly formal. “But I am not yet hungry and would rather wait until we return to the SGC to consume food. I understand today is blue jello day in the mess hall.”  
  
The blonde light colonel - Carter, according to her uniform - smiled. “You do like your blue jello.” She had her tent broken down quickly and efficiently.  
  
“Did you get all the readings you needed?” Jackson asked.  
  
“Yes.” Carter launched into a highly complicated scientific dissertation that Frank only understood a third of, but Jackson was nodding, and Frank wondered if he was some kind of civilian contractor, also a scientist.  
  
Jackson hadn’t been kidding, though. The MRE tasted like chicken, but Frank ate it anyway, and then he helped break camp.  
  
Vala wasn’t a large woman, but she could more than hold her own, turned down Frank’s offer to help her with her gear by literally turning her nose up, and then she marched away.  
  
“So,” Carter asked, “what are you planning on doing with your downtime?”  
  
Even though the events of this dream were utterly banal - walking through a meadow to some destination unknown, a routine field mission - Frank was still exulting at the sensation of walking, of legs, of going where he wanted without a struggle, without the phantom pain of missing limbs.  
  
“You know, the usual,” Frank said, “stay at home with the wife and kids, maybe finally fix the porch like Wendy’s been getting after me to, take the boys fishing.”  
  
Everyone else ground to a halt, staring at him.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked.  
  
Carter said, “Cam, you don’t have a wife.”  
  
And Frank looked down at his young, perfect body, his intact body, and realized something was very wrong.   
  
“Who are you and what have you done with Cameron Mitchell?” Vala demanded, and she was aiming her P-90 at him.  
  
“My name is Frank Mitchell, and I thought this was a dream.”  
  
What happened after that was a blur. Teal’c aimed something at him that looked like a silvery snake, and the world went dark.  
  
When Frank awoke, he was in a medical bay, handcuffed to a hospital cot, with two Air Force SFs standing guard on him. One of them noticed he was awake and immediately reached for his radio, murmured into it.  
  
A moment later, he stared, numb with shock, as everyone he'd been camped with strode into the med bay, along with a pretty doctor and a two-star general.  
  
He watched himself wheel in behind them.  
  
“Why’s he in cuffs?”  
  
“It was just a precaution,” the general said, but he nodded at the SFs, and one of them immediately unlocked the cuffs.  
  
“Dad,” Frank heard himself say, and he blinked.  
  
“Cameron?”  
  
“Yeah, Dad.”  
  
“But I - it was a dream - I can walk again -”  
  
Frank watched himself wince. “Yeah, well, waking up in bed with Mom was more of a nightmare.”  
  
“Don’t talk about my wife that way,” Frank snapped.  
  
“Your wife, my mom.”  
  
And okay, Cameron had a point.  
  
Cameron. Was in Frank’s body. Which meant Frank was in Cameron’s. He’d been horrified when Cameron crashed his plane in that training exercise, saw his own life unfolding for his son, only Cameron had no wife, no family of his own to love and support him, but then he got to keep his legs, and Frank had hope Cameron would walk again. He’d been so relieved that Cameron had taken a safe posting, a desk job pushing paper at a deep space telemetry project.  
  
Cameron obviously hadn’t been honest about how safe his posting was, given that he had a P-90 and so did Vala and Jackson the civilian scientist.  
  
“How did this even happen?” Carter asked.  
  
Cameron fished in his pocket and came up with a black stone that Frank used as a paperweight.   
  
“Last time one of those got us into trouble,” Jackson said, “there was no actual switching of bodies.”  
  
“I thought all of ours were with the communication terminals,” Carter said.  
  
“O’Neill gave me one, like a good luck charm,” Cameron said. “Figured it was inert because I don’t have the Gene.”  
  
“You don’t?” The doctor looked puzzled.  
  
“Nope. Not a natural carrier, and that one time we went to Atl - our remote outpost, the gene therapy from Beckett didn’t take.”  
  
“Maybe it did take,” Carter said. “Only very weakly. Not enough to make anything else light up, but enough to make this happen.”  
  
“I guess you'll have to test this body for the gene,” Cameron said, patting himself on the chest.  
  
This body, he said. So casually.  
  
“No disrespect, sir,” Frank said to the general, “but what the hell is going on here?”  
  
“Let Sam do it,” Jackson said. “She’s done it the most times. First for her dad, and then that one boyfriend of hers.”  
  
“Go get me an NDA,” Carter said.  
  
Sam Carter. Cameron had mentioned the name before. Frank hadn't realized she was a she, just knew that Sam Carter was a renowned astrophysicist and headed up the science division of the Deep Space Telemetry project Cam was on.  
  
Jackson ducked out of the infirmary.  
  
“Let me draw some blood,” the doctor said to Cameron in Frank’s body, and he rolled up his sleeve obediently.  
  
“What does your mother think is going on?” Frank asked.  
  
Cameron ducked his head. “I told her I was taking a last-minute fishing trip. She didn't question me much. You two been fighting?”  
  
Frank didn’t answer. “How did you get here so fast? Where is here?”  
  
“Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado,” Cameron said. “And you were unconscious for about eight hours.”  
  
Frank squinted at Teal’c. “What was that thing you tased me with?”  
  
Cameron raised his eyebrows. “You zatted my dad?”  
  
“We weren’t sure he was your dad,” Carter said apologetically.   
  
“At least you didn't punch him,” Cameron muttered.  
  
Jackson returned with a bunch of papers for Frank to sign, which he did, willingly. Then he sat back and listened as Carter told him all about the Stargate Program, how his son had won a Medal of Honor fending off an alien assault on planet Earth, and how his son had been traveling to hundreds of planets and even other galaxies, exploring the universe and protecting Earth from various alien threats.   
  
Apparently Cameron and his teammates had run afoul of alien technology before, and that was what had happened here. Alien technology had swapped Frank and Cameron’s bodies and souls.  
  
“We can fix this, don't worry,” Vala said. “Sam is brilliant. She’ll do her science thing and you’ll be right as rain in no time.”  
  
The conversation had moved to Sam’s office once Dr. Lam cleared Frank to leave the infirmary. Some SFs had brought them food from the mess hall, including blue jello for Teal’c, while they talked.  
  
“Right as rain,” Frank echoed. He’d stood almost the entire time, glad to be standing.  
  
Cameron cast him a look. “Hey, Jackson, we’re basically on stand down till this whole thing is fixed. Why don't you take my dad and go...play a game of basketball or something? I better check in with my mom. Anything I should say to her?”  
  
Frank had played wheelchair basketball many times. He said, “I’m not feeling up for hoops right this second. Thought I might go for a run, though. There an indoor track or something?”  
  
“I’ll show you,” Vala said. “I love watching the Marines work out.”  
  
Frank avoided Cameron’s eyes as he followed Vala out of Carter’s office.  
  
Frank had never been a runner, never been one of those people who ran for meditation, for stress relief. He'd just gone running because it was part of training. But now - now he relished in the speed, the motion, the coordination. Faster than he could ever be with prosthetics. Not nearly as fast as with wheels, but so much better.   
  
While Vala ostensibly spotted for young, attractive Marines, Frank ran. He ran and ran and ran. Cameron was capable of running seemingly forever.   
  
Carter found the solution surprisingly quickly.   
  
“Between General O’Neill and Joe the Barber, Vala and Daniel, it could have still been complicated,” Sam said, “but then I remembered. Machello.”  
  
“Right,” Jackson said, wincing.   
  
Cameron lit up. “I read the report on that one. Everyone got swapped except Sam.”  
  
“All we have to do is arrange a round-robin of body-swaps,” Sam said. “I hooked a naquadah generator up to the thing, and so we are good to go. Who wants to be the third?”  
  
“Not it,” Jackson said immediately.   
  
“I am willing to volunteer, as I have undergone the procedure before,” said Teal’c, but Vala waved her hand like an over-eager student.   
  
“Pick me! I want to know what it’s like in Mitchell’s body.”  
  
“You've already been in my body,” Jackson said peevishly.   
  
“Teal’c it is,” Cameron said before Vala could get another word in edgewise.   
  
The alien device was large and looked heavy. Awkward.   
  
“That settles it.” Carter began flipping switches on the generator.  
  
Teal’c started to reach for the device, but Cameron said,  
  
“Dad, anything you want to do? Before we switch.”  
  
There were so many things Frank wanted to do. Dance with Wendy. Chase his grandkids. Walk the fields and trails of his youth.   
  
But he said, “It’s time.”  
  
Being in Teal’c’s body was disorienting, but it didn't last for long.   
  
And then Frank was back home, where he belonged. He gazed up at his son, his strong, brave, healthy son, and was fiercely glad.   
  
“Thank you,” he said to Carter.   
  
“Not a problem, sir.”  
  
“Now, how do I get home?”


End file.
